Love Most Wanted
by Filly Ingles
Summary: Series: Keigwin Family Series Work in Progress Installment the first in the Keigwin Family Series. This is Aubrey's story. How will Aubrey cope when his reason for living, goes away? Who will pay the price for Aubrey's frustration? Find out here!


**Chapter 1**

_Dear Aubrey_

_I don't want you to worry about me anymore Brey. I am doing fine. I hope you are doing well yourself. Andrew has decided to stay in Oklahoma for a while longer. I have to say it makes me feel a little better to have someone around from New York. He wanted me to remind you that he will look after me and wanted you too know he will keep his promise too you. What promise was that Brey? I've tried to get Andrew to share it with me, but he refuses, insists that it's just between you two and I don't need to know._

_I hope Foster is okay. You will look after him for me won't you Brey? I'm missing the rest of the family too. It's so quiet here. Peaceful and relaxing, for some I guess. I guess I'll get used to it in time. But sometimes when I lie in bed at night, I wish I could roll over and feel Norah pressed against my back, or hear Elspeth gently snoring. I miss the sound of Abe and Franklyn making music in the sitting room after dinner._

_I even miss hearing you creeping around from room to room, making sure that all the windows and doors are shut tight for the night. I was terrified the first night I got here. The silence, and the isolation was frightening. I really wish you had been here that first night. Just knowing you were around always made it easier for me to sleep._

_I hope that you are all coping without me there. Did ma take over running the boarding house? I suspect she will, if she hasn't already. And I hope Franklyn isn't making the rest of you work too hard to cover for me not being there to serve at the restaurant. I really am sorry that I left you boys with more work and less hands to do it._

_I know that I'm just home sick and missing the family, but I really do think that I will be better off coming here. There is one girl who has been here almost six months, and we get along rather well. Her name is Anne. She's shy, but she is opening up, and I feel more at ease around the other girls now. Give all my love to the family and give Foster a big hug from me._

_Until Will marries_

_Your Marly_

The reader curled his large fist around the letter and it crumpled within his grasp easily. With a long steadying draw on his cigarette, Aubrey Keigwin threw his cigarette onto the ground of the alley, un-aware of the force his fist was exerting on the harmless sheaf of paper. He slowly pushed his athletic body up off the crate which had been doubling as a chair, his dark brown hair brushed against the top of his ears and seemed to go straight into attack mode, stray pieces of fringe trying to poke into his olive brown eyes.

He stuffed the letter he had just read into the front pocket of his shirt, without any real care. His large black boot came down atop the still burning cigarette and crushed it to a premature death with more force then one needed to exert on a cigarette butt. Then un-satisfied by his very measured physical releases, Aubrey's restraint snapped.

With a blur of furious motion Aubrey turned his fist to the brick wall behind him. With a violent assuaging of the mountain of guilt that lived within him, Aubrey bloodied the beaten wall with the blood from his busted knuckles, still he refused to regain control yet, there was still so much frustration he could share with the emotionless comfort of the brick wall.

His fist was numb now, but his feelings weren't so easily dismissed. He had to take control or more then a fit of rage would take place in the alley, and Aubrey was afraid of the consequences if he gave way to the consuming urge. An urge he had ignored for 4 years, on a daily basis it would swell into his chest, at the worst moment and ravage Aubrey's ability to think. He had to take a cigarette break to focus on controlling his feelings.

Everyday for four years Aubrey had to fight the urge to collapse into a flood of tears. Sometimes he wasn't quiet fast enough to restrain them, and a single tear would trek down his life-wearied face as a silent warning that Aubrey didn't need. But whatever Aubrey did, he would not cry. Men didn't cry. His father didn't cry, and none of his brothers would even consider it. Even Foster, at three years old was crying very little, he knew his place. Men didn't cry, Aubrey couldn't fight society on that.

Men were stronger then women, how could a man shed tears in front of a woman and still even consider himself a man? It was man's job to be strong. Protect and provide. That was their purpose in life, and already Aubrey had failed to protect, he would not fail to be strong, he would provide for his girls. Not really his girls, he had to adjust his thoughts slowly. He treated them all as a father would beloved, cherished daughters, but they weren't his daughters to protect.

They were his sisters.

His father was in no state to protect anyone, so Aubrey had stepped into the hole created by his fathers' weakness and played father. At first he had believed it would only be a few weeks until his father too could come too grips with the same tragedy that Aubrey was silently trying to ignore. But his father hadn't returned to his role as protector, and Aubrey silently found that he didn't regret his enforced father role. In fact it made him feel safe, secure knowing that he could protect all three of his sisters, that they would never be hurt while he was close by. And he made sure they were never too far away for him to be considered close by.

"Aubrey? I need a hand moving some of these potatoes." The tentative statement was made in Abe's melodious tones.

"Yeah, just give a man a minute eh?" The response grumbled un-evenly from Aubrey's chest.

The back door of the restaurant fell shut behinds Abe's retreating back and Aubrey drew another long breath. Clenching and unclenching his fists, Aubrey spent a few seconds trying to stuff away his raging feelings as he had done with the letter. Feeling the sting start to fade out of his battered fist with the slow working of his hands into and out of fists methodically, Aubrey shook his hand open and started into the restaurant reluctantly.

"Where are these potatoes then?" Aubrey demanded

"Round the corner, John just delivered them." Abe noted softly as he cleaned pots and pans that lay soaking in the sink.

"I thought Elspeth was supposed to be doing the dishes." Aubrey's eye's narrowed as he searched the room finding a lack of female presence of any kind.

"Ma needed her help at the house." Abe turned to wipe his hands dry on a close by rag before stuffing his hands into the pockets of his pants.

"She could have told me!" Aubrey pointed out gruffly as he heaved the heavy sack of potatoes onto his shoulder, the scuffling behind him indicating Abe was doing the same with the second sack.

"Why should she do that Aubrey? You aren't the manager." This was the impatient and demanding tone of Franklyn, who was in fact the restaurant manager in the place of their father who wasn't capable of doing any managing of anything in his life anymore.

"She knows I worry Frank, it'd have been decent if she told me." Aubrey glowered formidably at his older brother.

"It would have been decent if you'd mentioned you were heading out for a break. Seems as soon as any work needs being done around here you're out the door smoking." Frank's monotone business voice grated deftly on Aubrey's already thin nerves.

"I do as much work as anyone else is this damn place! You calling me a slacker Franklyn?" The sack of potatoes that had rested so comfortably on Aubrey's shoulder hit the ground with a violence that made the other two men jump.

"I asked him to go and empty the dish-water Frank, I forgot to let ya know." Abe offered an excuse with his earnest olive eyes, and Frank stared, inspected, and searched for deceit before nodding and walking into the front of the restaurant to pack up the chairs.

"I don't need you-"

"What happened to your hand?" Abe hissed grabbing Aubrey's wrist and showing him the bloodied knuckles in case they had escaped his attention.

"I was reading Marly's letter. She says she's doing real good up in Oklahoma." Aubrey winced because he knew that Abraham would read every word in that sentence and put together a very honest idea of what had actually happened out there.

Aubrey tilted his chin slightly in challenge to what might next be sympathetic murmurs. He faced eyes so similar to his that sometimes it was difficult to tell weather he was looking at Abe or into a mirror. Abe's hair the exact same dark brown as his own was cut in the same way as Aubrey's. The truth of the matter was that all the boys hair hung like Aubrey and Abe's, there mother could cut hair in one way and that was to put a metal bowl on their head and cut around it. The famous Keigwin bowl cut. Within weeks of having their hair cut all the boys hair started to greet the force of gravity and pull slowly down towards there ears, reaching for the goal of their shoulders, but the bowl was always replaced before their hair got much longer then the top of their ears.

They shared the same body, he and Abe, but owned two such different personalities. Sometimes an argument could be made for them even sharing the same brain, on some spooky occasions when one of the two boys would finish the other's sentence without notice. Times like that had faded out when they were still children but once in a while the world seemed to want to remind them of their extra special bond by giving the other twin, usual Abe, an in depth understanding of the other's feelings. Like now when Abe stared at him blankly, aware of how Aubrey would greet his genuine sympathy.

"I'm finishing up with these dishes then going home for a feed. If you want to go do the first rounds and make sure everything is locked tight, you can probably head home. I should be back at the house in no more then twenty minutes." Abe played second fiddle to Franklyn more times then not, but Abe knew the goings on of the restaurant just as well at Franklyn did, if Franklyn could not be found restaurant questions were directed to Abe, so Aubrey took his brother at his word, made a check of all the windows and doors then stepped out into the back alley again.

Leaning against the wall, Aubrey busied himself rolling a cigarette, while the sounds of the city filtered into his mind. Instead of the incessant hawking of the news boys, flower girls and matchstick kids, Aubrey heard the definite change from the daily grind that descended every morning at sunrise onto the great American city of New York, to the more jovial and wicked playtime for the cities employee's who were intent on shaking off the shackles of reality, with booze, women and fighting.

A cynic Aubrey had been called, but there was the definite sound of debauchery in the air, it had a unique correlation to the sound of wild, free laughter, and group good times. Aubrey despised the sound, maybe years earlier when he had still held a debilitating amount of innocence, he would have longed to be out on the dark midnight streets with a saucy wench clasped close to him, a bottle of fine liquor offered freely to his companions and no more then the thought of the good times ahead, but now he was responsible, now he had something better then good times with like minded friends, he had girls that needed his protection, and constant vigilance.

Slipping the perfectly packed cigarette between lips that were creased with frown lines Aubrey struck a match off the wall of the restaurant and shielded the fragile flame from the light wind with a covering hand as he lit the cigarette puffing the relaxing smoke into lungs that had long since given up any fight to reject the foreign particles. Aubrey pushed his feet to enter the street with it's thin film of merry makers, he turned his body away from the street, and huddled into himself as he tried to make it the few blocks to his lodging house home without being offered drunken good cheer, or lustful delights from women with little more then their body to offer a real man.

The walk was short and the scenery lost on the man who had to walk through it on a daily basis, it wasn't that he grew tired of the street's around him, they changed on a daily basis, but he missed the subtle changes because he disliked paying any more attention to the world outside of his own dark thoughts then was absolutely necessary to get by from day to day. He turned into the street that settled the Keigwin Family boarding house at it's top.

Out the front sat two boys who were striking in their similarity, they were giggling which was the prerogative of youth and passing a thin, burning tube between themselves. Aubrey stilled as he watched his brother share what looked similar to his own cigarette, in what they must have assumed was a safe place to get away with their rule breaking. Surely it was only a small thing. And perhaps fortunate that they weren't smoking continuously as many children their ages already were. But it was not something that Aubrey was going to let pass.

"What do you think you two bums are up too?" Aubrey's voice rose and his voice clattered down the teens spine as both stared up at him like two mice caught eating the cheese.

"Aubrey!" This exclamation was coughed out as the younger of the two had just drawn a puff of smoke down his throat, and expelled it again quickly in a cloud of smoke.

"It's not what you think it is Aubrey…" The second slightly older boy begged for understanding his dark eye's wide his hand possessing the cigarette holding it in front of his face in shell shock.

"And here I was thinking you two sixteen year old kids were smoking a cigarette!" Aubrey announced his eye's had the ability to fill strangers heart with the urge to flee, and with his two brothers who knew what he was capable of it had the bonus of gluing them to the spot and dumbly taking the aggressive scolding their brother was about to give them, because if you ran from Aubrey he got a hold of you, one way or another and then things just got worse.

"We've never d… done it before Aubrey. The… the… boys said it'd be alright to try it." The youngest of the triplets Ellis managed to stutter his eye's still wide and fearful.

"And you thought you'd sit out the front of the house, where anyone could come up, and smoke it before going inside and acting like nothing happened?" Aubrey's voice rose higher in indignation at their lack of thought.

The oldest triplet, Ethan hung his head and nodded shamefaced.

"And did you think no one would smell the smoke on your clothes? Did you think Ma wouldn't be able to smell it on your breath? You both reck of it. I ought let father know about this! You know what he would do to the both of you don't you?" It wasn't a quest for information from either of them; it was just to remind them both of what their father's idea of punishment was when he was called upon to take a hand in raising his children.

Both boys shuddered and winced as the imagined the welts they'd share on their respective backsides if their father were to be told of their mild act of rebellion.

"What if your sister had come out and caught you doing this?" Aubrey demanded his voice almost became shrill with rage as he thought of what would have happened if Elspeth had indeed caught her fellow Triplets out here smoking. She would have demanded they share their forbidden little secret with her, or else. Aubrey wasn't blind to his sisters demanding nature, but the blame fell on Ethan and Ellis who should have had the brain to expect the possibility of being caught by their sister.

"And Norah! What if Norah had come out and seen her beloved Ellis smoking? Do you really think she'd take to this with a reasonable response? What if she to wanted to try this cigarette? Would you let her?" Aubrey beat both the boys with what ifs.

"Of course I wouldn't have let Norah smoke it. I'm not insane, she's just a baby." Ellis said his lip started to push from quivering in fear to stiffening in indignation of his own.

"That's a small relief!" Aubrey said deciding he could offer them nothing more in the way of punishment unless he involved their father, and he'd not do that to either of them, when he himself had received a hiding from his father for starting his smoking at fourteen. He'd mutinously continued with the habit to prove to his father he couldn't be bullied or beaten. The two sixteen year olds having a puff on the cigarette really wasn't much of a problem, but Aubrey didn't want them to think that their stupidness would be let pass without issue, but he was content that they had learnt their lesson by the mere mention of involving their father.

"Right off you go, straight up stairs, wash your face and hands, and change your clothes before you come down for dinner or Ma is sure to know what you two ratbags have been up too. Go on off with you now! Oh and boys do I have to tell you that if I see this happening again I'll have to tell father?" Aubrey enquired his eyes narrowed.

"No sir, Aubrey." Ethan and Ellis both replied quickly as they jumped up threw the cigarette as far from them as they could manage and both boys ran indoors as if a hells hound was on their feet.

Aubrey sighed, and shook his head, moving over to the discard butt of the boys' cigarette, crushing it under his boot, and finishing his own before handling that too with the same treatment. Aubrey looked down at his grazed knuckles and sighed before he turned and headed indoors for the evening.


End file.
